Hillary and Durbin Accuse Republicans of Playing Politics with the War in Afghanistan

RUSH: I want to talk about what's going on in Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield. This is the story where Muslim prisoners were using books, occasionally Korans, to pass messages to one another -- incendiary messages. They were using books in the jail to pass messages to each other. Some of the books were the Koran. Nobody knew this because they were not printed in English. When it was discovered, the books were taken away. The people that took the books away are not the people who discovered the books. The soldiers that took the books away and burned them didn't know they were burning Korans. They were just told to dispatch of the stuff. On schedule and on cue, massive protests erupted all over Kabul and Americans were shot.

And then Obama apologized to our puppet, or our former puppet over there, Hamid Karzai, who is the president of Afghanistan. Obama apologized, and new. And now, if you haven't heard this, a Muslim group somewhere (it might be in Kabul, in Afghanistan) has demanded that the soldiers who took the garbage out and burned it now be put on trial and prosecuted. Ah. NATO has agreed to the prosecution! So the soldiers, the Americans who burned the garbage, who did not know that the Koran was in there... And, by the way, the Muslim prisoners themselves defaced the Koran by writing messages to each other in these books.

It was discovered; they were taken away and burned. So now these guys are gonna prosecuted as everybody is scared to death and bending over backwards not to offend, and it's gotten to the point where: Why are we there? If this is the end result of us being there, let's get these people out, bring 'em home and to hell with the place over there! We're going over there for a host of reasons. I've been there. It was many years ago. There was a, ah, variation of nation-building going on. We were building schools, and we were building especially schools for women. We were doing everything we could. This is during the Bush years that I was there.

But they were doing everything they could to help women in Afghanistan get out from the prisons they lived in just in terms of everyday life. We're building roads and this kind of like. But at the same time, we're also there for our own national security. Al-Qaeda was able to take over the place because it was a stateless place; there was no leadership. After the war between the Russians and the Afghanis, there was a revolution, and it was a stateless place. And that's made to order for a terrorist group. They went in and the Taliban took over. So we're trying to prevent that from happening. There are a lot of good things we're trying to do. But Obama has botched it left and right by announcing withdrawal dates and pullout dates and this kind of thing.

If our soldiers are going to be prosecuted for doing their jobs, and if NATO and the rest of these people are just gonna bend over and grab the ankles, what is the point, folks? For me, it's a simple case of being fed up and tired with the assumption that it's the United States that's guilty by virtue of its presence. Obama doesn't help this along by apologizing left and right over and over again. Victor Davis Hanson points out at National Review: Look, an apology may be one time -- if done right in the right place, at the right time and with the right tone and tenor -- might have an impact. But when you just do it again and again and again all you eventually say about yourself is that you're a weakling joke. And that's what Obama's doing. I think it's just absurd.

And now Mrs. Clinton's gotten involved in this, of course, as the secretary of state. She's upset that there is criticism of Obama for apologizing. Yesterday morning on State of the Union on CNN, Elise Labott interviewed Hillary Rodham Clinton and she said, "President Obama's apology has been very controversial. I mean obviously Newt Gingrich and others have made this apology part of the campaign, but other experts in Afghanistan are saying this apology sends the wrong message. It gives the Taliban the excuse to go against us, to help use our enemies against us. And also a lot of these attacks that are happening against Americans seem to be in retaliation for something the US is taking responsibility for the burning of the Korans. What do you say to that" Mrs. Clinton?

HILLARY: Well, I find it, you know, somewhat, uhh, troubling that, uhh, our politics, uhh, would inflame such a dangerous situation in Afghanistan. I well remember, uh, during the he added years of President Bush's administration when something happened that was regrettable -- unintentional as this incident was -- President Bush was quick to say: "Look, you know, we're sorry about this. This is something that, uh, you know, we obviously did not mean to do." That's all that President Obama was doing.

RUSH: Waaaaa...? How can she say that with a straight face? Bush? What did I miss? Bush apologized all over the place for things like this when they happened? But more than that -- more than that -- Mrs. Clinton says, "I find it somewhat troubling that our politics would inflame such a dangerous situation." Really, Mrs. Clinton? You "find it a shame that our politics would inflame such" a situation? how about when Michael Isikoff ran the false story that Korans are being flushed down a toilet at Club Gitmo?

What about when you guys were calling David Petraeus a liar before he even testified? And MoveOn.org ran that ad in the New York Times called Betray Us? What about Harry Reid: "This war is lost." What about John Kerry, John Murtha agreeing with false allegations that the Marines in Haditha had committed rape, murder, and mayhem against women, and had acted like terrorists. You are troubled that our politics would inflame such a dangerous situation, and this kind of thing didn't happen when Bush was president. How about Mrs. Clinton herself undermining the war in Iraq? Let's go back, her website, it's a video, February 18th, 2007. Hillary held a HillCast where she described her plan to stop Bush's escalation, laid out a road map for the end of the war in Iraq.

HILLARY: Now it's time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days or the Congress will revoke authorization for this war.

RUSH: Oh, it's somewhat troubling our politics would inflame such a dangerous situation. September 11th, 2007, in Washington, Capitol Hill. This was during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about the status of the war in Iraq. Petraeus was testifying, and Mrs. Clinton, during the Q&A.

HILLARY: You have been made the de facto spokesman for what many of us believe to be a failed policy.

RUSH: Oh, no.

HILLARY: Despite what I view as your rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony both yesterday and today, I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.

RUSH: Whoa. So Mrs. Clinton is basically saying the war is lost, too, it's a failed policy. Ah, it's very troubling that our politics would inflame such a dangerous situation in Iraq. 'Cause she was on CNN yesterday, she's very upset that our politics would inflame this situation with the Korans being burned in Afghanistan, oh, it's horrible. Bush did the same thing Obama did, he apologized left and right. No big deal here. That's all Obama's doing. April 28, 2003, Hartford, Connecticut, the annual Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey dinner. Here's Mrs. Clinton.

HILLARY 2003 (screeching): I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, "WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!"

RUSH: And people ask why the divorce rate in America is so high. But that's Mrs. Clinton. Terrible, terrible thing our politics would inflame such a dangerous situation in Afghanistan or Iraq. It's just so horrible, isn't it? Mrs. Clinton can't believe that people would politicize this. And let's go to Dick Turban. He was on Morning Joe this morning on MSNBC and the guest panelist was Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington. She had an aspirin between her knees. She said, "What about those events like Afghanistan, gasoline prices, global events over which the president has so little control." Did Andrea Mitchell ever make that observation about George W. Bush? Worldwide events that the president had so little control? So she continues her question to Turban, "Gasoline prices. Doesn't President Obama have a lot of challenges going ahead, going forward as the commander-in-chief, as the incumbent?"

DURBIN: Look at the three Republican candidates scurrying to go to these talk shows on Sunday to try to say, well, we're really going to broaden this battle, the inflammatory rhetoric from Newt Gingrich which just continues on a regular basis. President Obama is showing leadership at a time when people want it. He's trying to calm a dangerous situation when we have American troops whose lives are at stake. That is what a leader does in foreign policy, doesn't run off and inflame the situation in the hopes of winning a few points back home.

RUSH: Really? Really? Obama showing leadership when people want it, calm a dangerous situation? We have troops whose lives are at stake? This Gingrich guy, all this inflammatory rhetoric. Well, it seems to me, if we go back to June 10th of 2005, seems to me we got somebody who's a perp, guilty of this. We found somebody who's done exactly what Durban says shouldn't be done. We found a sound bite of somebody in 2005 doing exactly what Dick Durbin's speaking out against this morning.

DURBIN: If I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags --

RUSH: Wow.

DURBIN: -- or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others --

RUSH: Whoa.

DURBIN: -- that had no concern for human beings.

RUSH: Whoa.

DURBIN: Sadly --

RUSH: No.

DURBIN: -- that's not the case.

RUSH: No, it's not.

DURBIN: This was the action of Americans in treatment of their own prisoners.

RUSH: I have to take a break, but the hypocrisy here is just glaring. Politicizing, inflaming, criticizing these Democrats, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? They are the perps! They start this stuff.